Lake County Gazette

History teacher Frank McCormick ripped into Waukegan Public Schools Superintendent Theresa Plascencia at a recent school board meeting.

McCormick accused Plascencia of misleading the school district.

“Ms. Plascencia is a member of a bureaucratic class of charlatans and frauds, enriching herself at the expense of an impoverished community while students suffer,” McCormick told an audience at the meeting. "Her tenure with the district should come to an immediate end, and I hope that after the Waukegan community finds the voice to make that happen, they will challenge the foundations of this rotten system.”

McCormick said he was quiet about the problems he saw but finally decided to share his criticism publicly.

“This system offers adults job security and a paycheck for little more than one's obedience, compliance and silence. A lot of it's about maintaining the illusion that we're a functioning school district. I've decided to speak out as penance for my years of silence while my students suffer,” McCormick said.  

He said the school system is falling apart and that incompetence on behalf of the school administration has lead to a culture in which students are not learning and increasingly suffer from behavioral problems.

“Our schools are on the verge of collapse from behavioral chaos, violence, staff burnout and a 10 to 12 percent student proficiency rate in math and reading,” McCormick said. “These are the fruits of Ms. Plasencia's half decade with the district for which she's been rewarded a 45 percent increase in her base salary, earning her over $300,000 a year with a taxpayer funded pension worth $16 million.”

Plascencia was previously a Chicago Public Schools principal. In 2015 she was named superintendent of Waukegan Public Schools by District 60 Board of Education.

McCormick has been a teacher for the past decade.

He said Plascencia's focus on race is a means to distract parents from the school system’s poor performance.

“Suddenly, this is no longer about her incompetence, but the ghosts of implicit bias and racism haunting our schools, which she will now exorcise through diversity, equity and inclusion rights that will cost the district millions,” McCormick said. “The narrative she has seized upon has emboldened the ideological infiltration of critical theories into the district and classroom.”

The K-12 school district has 17,000 students and includes 15 elementary schools, five middle schools and a high school program.

As of 2016 the school district has an operating budget of $180 million per year.

See McCormick’s full speech below:

My name is Frank McCormick, and I've been a teacher here for 10 years. Sorry, the superintendent couldn't be here.

This system offers adults job security and a paycheck for little more than one's obedience, compliance and silence. A lot of it's about maintaining the illusion that we're a functioning school district. I've decided to speak out as penance for my years of silence while my students suffer. Our schools are on the verge of collapse from behavioral chaos, violence, staff burnout and a 10 to 12% student proficiency rate in math and reading. These are the fruits of Ms. Plasencia's half decade with the district for which she's been rewarded a 45 percent increase in her base salary, earning her over $300,000 a year with a taxpayer funded pension worth $16 million.

The only thing that will put an end to her plunder of this impoverished community would be the community's awakening to her record of failure, and I suspected she knew that, which is why her subtle racial demagogery against teachers and invocations of the specter of systemic racism is so deviously ingenious. She has seized upon national racial volatility to create an incredibly convenient excuse for her regime's failures.

"Suddenly, this is no longer about her incompetence, but the ghosts of implicit bias and racism haunting our schools, which she will now exorcise through diversity, equity and inclusion rights that will cost the district millions.

"The narrative she has seized upon has emboldened the ideological infiltration of critical theories into the district and classroom.

What does this look like?

Let me share two examples. You have students reading books and receiving lessons, equating our police force – those that have to clean up her mess in the schools – with Confederate slave patrols. And a survey for ninth grade students I uncovered asking children if they, and I quote "orgasm during their last hookup." All of this is undergirded by her equity plan that, according to district e-mails, will dismantle our white, dominant culture. What does that encompass? Shifting the blame for Plascencia's failures onto teachers with dozens of hours of implicit bias training and an up-until-now unannounced plan to abolish our alternative program. She's opening Pandora's box with these radical critical ideologies. However well-intentioned people think they are, they will increase the racialization of an already fractured community and impart upon our students identitarian lenses that center on skin color as the central part of their existence. Or what was referred to in the training by the district paid for as "liberatory education."

So carelessly does she unleash these forces? She hasn't even considered the social implications of an increasingly racially conscious and radicalized youth. Suppose the moment in history comes when economic conditions are dire. In that case, our youth's perceptive stratification of racial groups into oppress or oppressed classes will come to fruition in a social storm that will tear this country apart. Ms. Plascencia is a member of a bureaucratic class of charlatans and frauds, enriching herself at the expense of an impoverished community while students suffer. Her tenure with the district should come to an immediate end, and I hope that after the Waukegan community finds the voice to make that happen, they will challenge the foundations of this rotten system. Good night.